[ecrea] CfP - Movies and Music: National and Transnational Perspectives

Movies and Music: National and Transnational Perspectives

Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

September 18-20, 2014 (Thursday to Saturday)


20th Anniversary SERCIA Conference

SERCIA, founded in France in 1993, is a European-based association of 
scholars dedicated to the study of English-speaking cinema. It organizes 
an annual conference dedicated to a particular theme. The theme of the 
2014 conference is "Music and Movies: National and Transnational 
Perspectives." It will be hosted by the Department of American Studies, 
Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands on September 18-20, 2014. 
Nijmegen is the oldest town in the Netherlands and well known to movie 
experts from Richard Attenborough's A Bridge Too Far (1977). This year 
will mark the 70th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, designed to 
end the war quickly. During the operation, launched on September 17, 
1944, American, Canadian, British, and Polish troops liberated Nijmegen. 
Our conference participants will consequently find the scenic town 
center buzzing with international visitors, parades, concerts, and film 
events around the theme of liberation. In addition to our conference 
lectures, panels, and workshops on the aural dimension of film, we will 
present an exhibition as well as a live musical performance on "The 
Soundtrack of Liberation" synchronized with live screenings.

Call for Papers

The global appeal of films in the digital age is not only driven by 
impressive visuals but also by music. We not only watch a film: the 
soundtrack plays a crucial role in shaping our perception of what is 
shown on the screen. Music represents perhaps the most neglected 
paradigmatic medium, in spite of being a powerful influence on how films 
are understood and are able to cross national, cultural, and ethnic 
boundaries. Musicians, composers, sound designers, directors, producers, 
and distributors function as influential cultural mediators (in the 
sense of Stephen Greenblatt) who are constitutive in shaping regional, 
subnational and national identities. Thus, the theme Movies and Music 
raises broader issues in transnational studies, film studies, media 
studies, and studies in performance culture. The conference will bring 
together international scholars from diverse disciplines offering a 
discursive platform for the collaboration between film studies, cultural 
studies, American studies, musicology, ethnomusicology, performance 
culture, sound design, and media studies. We hope to decode the nexus 
between movies and music from historical, theoretical, and analytical 
perspectives.

Despite the centrality of our theme to film, media, and entertainment 
culture, the influences of music, sound effects, and language on the 
visual often remain on the fringes of academic investigations. Indeed, 
we do not yet have an established analytical language in order to 
understand the complex interplay of hearing and seeing a film. The 
conference Movies and Music explores, maps, and critically evaluates the 
creative interplay between sights, sounds, and synaesthesia, a 
phenomenon linked to the ability of seeing sounds, hearing colors, and 
associating colours, spaces, and emotions with sounds.

The conference will also explore many other issues. We especially 
encourage proposals on themes/areas such as:

--music in silent film, the early sound era, New Hollywood, 
non-Hollywood narrative film, IMAX

--music in film genres such as the western, (neo-)noir, horror, sci-fi, 
animation film

--Broadway musicals, music bio-pics, dance movies

--transcultural strategies in the use of film music and transnational 
composers (from Max Steiner to Hans Zimmer)

--technical aspects such as surround sound, sensurround, 3-D audio

--musical styles in movies from late romanticism via avant-garde to 
popular music

--the use of pre-existing music, synthesizers, and sampling in film

--music and film in performance culture, music in character and action 
scenes

--collaborations between directors and composers, directors as composers 
(e.g. Charlie Chaplin, John Carpenter, and others -- including, for 
comparative purposes, Sergio Leone, Tom Tykwer, etc.)

--movies and music outside the multiplex, e.g. video games, museums, 
concerts, events, etc.

--recent developments in transgressive performance culture (e.g. 
Josephine Machon)

--film music and emotions, impacts on the brain, aesthetic and 
psychological responses

--connections of painting, music, and art with case studies ranging from 
Walter Ruttmann's experimental work in international modernism via Walt 
Disney (e.g. Fantasia, 1940) to contemporary avant-garde work in digital 
media

While SERCIA is dedicated to the study of English-speaking cinema, paper 
proposals comparing music in English-speaking cinema to that in 
non-English-speaking cinema are welcome


Please send proposals for individual papers both to Frank Mehring 
((fmehring /at/ gmail.com)) and Melvyn Stokes ((melvynstokes /at/ hotmail.com))


Proposals should be 200-300 words including a short biography and 
contact details. (You do not need to be a member of SERCIA to submit a 
proposal but you will have to be a member to give a paper - the current 
subscription is 30 euros, 15 for concessions.)


Deadline: March 1, 2014


Organizers: Frank Mehring (Head of American Studies, Radboud University) 
and Melvyn Stokes (University College London, President of SERCIA)


Program and updates: www.ru.nl/col/SERCIA?


--
Dr Matthew Jones
Research Associate

Department of History
UCL
Gower Street
LONDON
WC1E 6BT
Tel: 020 7679 7960 (Ext 37960)


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